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The US mortgage market was not owned by the US government, it was securitized and therefore incredibly difficult to figure out who actually held the debt.

The financial crisis was bigger than the subprime market. Banks were over leveraged and bond ratings were bogus. If the problem was just sub-prime mortgages, and the actual holders of those sub-prime mortgages were easy to identify, the problem would have been simpler.

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Aren't Freddy and Fanny state-owned and de facto holding most securitized mortgages in the US?

At the time of the crisis they were listed on the stock market and then put into 'conservatorship'.

They bought mortgages and resold them on as mortgaged-backed securities, presumably to a mix of US and foreign entities.

They hold most 30 year mortgages. Subprime mortgagages, ARMs etc were securitized. If the problem was Freddie or Fannie not getting paid it would be a different problem.

Lehman Bros went bankrupt, as would many other financial institutiosn without a bailout because they held a lot of garbage paper (including subprime mortgages) and were very illiquid. Many European and Asian banks had huge US mortgage exposure.

The problem was extreme mispricing of risk and illiquidity.

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